


The Mandate of Dragons

by mercuriallyCooperative



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 02:29:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8692864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuriallyCooperative/pseuds/mercuriallyCooperative
Summary: Iormungandr may not be his parents, the famed Celestial, Temeraire, and the notorious Kazilik, Iskierka. But he, too, can change the course of wars.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Before the Nile](https://archiveofourown.org/works/44579) by [xenakis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenakis/pseuds/xenakis). 
  * Inspired by [Remembrance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/633484) by [laulan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laulan/pseuds/laulan). 
  * Inspired by [Excidium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/378996) by [quigonejinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn). 
  * Inspired by [Draconigena](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/244267) by The Potless Stoner. 
  * Inspired by [A Summer Twilight](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/244270) by Larathin Bradley. 
  * Inspired by [A Thousand Years To Live](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/244273) by Totally Renegade. 



> I wrote this in November of 2013 for a Freshman writing class about fans and fandom and cult audiences. Our assignment was, I believe, literally to write a fanfic, in the traditional style for such things. Also, we were supposed to provide sources from which we "poached" themes and such. There's a longer list of other works this was inspired by in the end notes- the above were just the most prominent. This is the result.

The dragons of this strange world are all dead now. So Iormungandr rests deep beneath the earth, and watches the War go by.

He sees it in his mind's eye like a dream, men and women who wield fire like his mother's kind, and others who control water and stone in much the same way. Once, before the fighting, he remembers there were people who could create hurricanes to match his father's famous Divine Wind.

It makes him lonely; the dragons of his world were never meant to be solitary creatures.

* * * *

_The egg cracks. He can hear the world outside the shell now, clearer than the muted tones from Before. The world brightens; it is not so warm as it had been, and he is very hungry. The horn-nubs on his head butt against the shell, and he forces his way out._

_For long moments, the hatchling blinks, peering curiously at the ring of humans around him. “Iskierka and Temeraire have said one of you is to be my captain,” he tells them, shaking out his wings clumsily. He begins to toddle around the circle, causing some of the candidates to flinch backward. The dragonet frowns at them. “You are all very silly to be afraid of me; I am not at all big yet. Although,” he brightens, “I am a firebreather and I have the Divine Wind also, so perhaps I am intimidating.” He turns his head toward a corner of the room, takes a deep breath, and when he exhales, a concussive wave of fire blasts apart a wooden crate there._

_When the flames die down, the hatchling looks around the room. Surely, someone should be very impressed with him and wish for him to set more things alight. But he sees that the humans have all frozen in place, staring at him in more horror than awe. He scowls._

_“You are all stupid,” he declares, “and not very fierce at all. I am hungry and know that I am to let one of you harness me before I eat, but I do not like any of you, and Temeraire has told me that I should not choose a captain that I do not want. So I shall not, but I will fight Napoleon for you anyway, and take many prizes as Iskierka has told me I could, and not share my treasure with any of you.” He looks haughtily at the dumbstruck candidates._

_He is still very hungry, though, and so says after a moment of consideration, “But you may feed me, if you like, or else I shall leave and go find supper myself. And if none of you are to name me, then I shall be Iormungandr, for the world-serpent in one of Temeraire’s books.”_

* * * *

He considered taking a captain, as he grew older. In the Aerial Corps, he knew many good captains, like Temeraire’s Laurence or Iskierka’s Granby or Excidium’s Jane. But, as always, the War in the world above reminds him why he has never been too tempted.

Iormungandr sees the humans dying. Some are crushed by boulders flung across battlefields, while others are drowned beneath tsunamis called forth from nothing, and still more die screaming, trapped and burning in the wreckage of war-torn towns. Humans are so very fragile, he thinks as he nightmares away the decades. And wars are dangerous, even on dragonback. How difficult it would be, to cherish one’s captain, only to loose them in an instant. 

Or to time, he thinks suddenly to himself. For as the years drag onward and he ages little, he watches whole families grow up in the moments between the fighting. He lets his dreams drift across the skies; he has seen hundreds fall in battle, cities razed to the ground, entire peoples wiped out in a day, and he has watched the princeling with the golden eyes die before the walls of great city Ba Sing Se.

To live long enough for a thousand such losses, each breaking his imperfectly repaired heart again- no. All the treasure in the world would not be worth such sorrow, in his opinion.

* * * *

_He wakes on a mountaintop where he has never been before. His head hurts, and some of the bristling spines on his back are torn. Iormungandr looks around, noticing some of his cerulean scales laying crushed and cracked around him. He feels more still in his skin, itching and stinging. Turning, he cannot see his caves or even the Loch Laggan covert at all._

_He can still fly, although perhaps not for long, and so he gathers his legs beneath him and leaps into the air, catching the wind on suddenly unfurled wings. Beating them quickly to gain height, he looks down at the world below. To himself, he says, “I have not seen these places before; certainly this is not Britain. But it is not China or France, either, nor the rest of the Continent. And I do not see anyone who could have brought me here, in any case.”_

_Iormungandr hovers above a mountain range that stands to the east of some long and empty plain. Nearby, there is a sort of temple, and far on the edge of the north-western horizon he can see the faint smudge of a massive wall._

_He does not yet know of the Earth Kingdom, or the Eastern Air Temple, or even the legendary city of Ba Sing Se. All he knows is what he feels in his bones, and in the shiver through his cracked scales: This is not home. This is not home._

* * * *

It is strange. Nearly one-hundred-and-fifty years after his arrival here, Iormungandr looks out at the world through his dreams, and watches a girl who he might have chosen for a captain, in another life. She has gold eyes like wolves’, and hair as smooth and black as a Celestial’s scales- and the fire she can bend to her will is Iormungandr’s own cerulean.

She is a princess, too, he notices. And she fights with a burning cold in her, a ferocity that lays waste to the obstructions in her path, be they crates or stone walls or soldiers. Surely, he thinks, together they would have fought Napoleon to a bloody stop, and taken all his empire and gold and ships as prizes, or else together burned it all away. He considers it for a moment. Yes, he muses, truly she would have made a good captain.

He does not realize when he first thinks of her as such. He is dreaming of her battles, her overthrow of cities, watching the sharp tongue and quick wit that set her far superior to all. And then he thinks: _’And certainly her father shall name her Heir and someday Fire Lord, for Ozai must surely see that of course my captain is the most deserving of the role.’_  It is a long time before he recalls these words, and laughs at what they have wrought.

Time passes strangely when one sleeps beneath the world, dreaming the dreams of spirits and gods, watching life and death drag on. Soon the girl he calls captain is nearly grown, and off to fight the war of her forbearers. He sees her succeed many times- and then sees her begin to fail. Not because of any lack on her part, but rather because it is clear to him that her enemies have the spirits of this world on their side.

The War continues, nearing its conclusion, and for his captain, it grows steadily worse. But Iormungandr has one secret. He has learned to use the strange magic here, the “chi” that lends humans their firebreathing, the power that this world’s spirits wield. So in an instant he makes a decision, gathering this power into himself, as though he is taking the deepest breath he can, preparing for the firestorm that is his version of the Divine Wind.

He waits awhile, and then the moment comes. Iormungandr wakes. And releases all the power he has gathered, even his very form and breath, into the princess he calls captain.

* * * *

_The three stand facing each other. Princess Azula glares at her once-friend and now betrayer, Mai, while their other friend, Ty Lee, looks on in fear and indecision. The heat from the volcano around them creates ripples in the air, distorting the world. Azula is still, waiting, ready to strike down the traitor if she so much as twitches. Ty Lee won’t stop her- the acrobat is too loyal and too devoted to stand in her way._

_Movement. Mai begins the motion to throw one of her many knives, while Azula gathers lightning in her fingertips, and Ty Lee prepares to make a choice that will change the course of the war for the last time. But these actions have barely started when the princess collapses, followed shortly by the acrobat. For a moment, they both struggle to stand again, feeling something strange in their blood and breath, something dizzying and almost familiar._

_Then they loose consciousness._

_Azula dreams. There is a dragon, the color of her firebending. He stares at her with eyes as gold as her own, the same fierceness in them that she has seen in mirrors. She does not fear him; she stares back, and as they stand as reflections to one another, the dragon speaks. “I am Iormungandr, and you are my captain,” he informs her, “and I have slept beneath this world for a very long time. I did not wish to see you harmed, and so I have chosen now to reveal myself to you, and in doing so grant you my form and life and power. Your friend, too, shares my lifespan, because as I have learned, we dragons do not do well alone.” There is a moment’s pause. “And I shall sleep now in your heart, if ever you should need me.” Before Azula can reply, the dream shifts and blurs. Her memory of the dragon fades. The rest is fire._

_When the princess wakes, the war goes on. Mai has been captured for her betrayal. With Ty Lee by her side, Azula chases her brother, Zuko, and the Avatar in an effort to recapture them. When that fails, the princess and the acrobat return to the Fire Nation to prepare for Sozin’s Comet, and the plan that they hope shall win them the Hundred Year War. And on the day of the final battle for her crown and country, even as the Comet overhead sends a rush of power through her veins, Azula feels a strange calm. She takes a deep breath. “You lose,” she tells her brother._

_In fire and lightning, the Divine Wind roars from her fingertips._

* * * *

Fire Lord Azula watches the empty throne room in the dark. In the Royal Wing of the Palace, Ty Lee is waiting. Far away, she knows, Zuko, Mai, and Ozai are imprisoned; a brother, a traitor, a king. Further still, the Avatar and his friends wait warily for a conclusion to their little quest. To the war that still rages. Still, the new-crowned Fire Lord watches. Suddenly, she makes a quick gesture. Around the raised dais in the center of the room, a wall of cerulean flame springs to life. It roars, and a quiet smirk appears on Azula’s lips.

 _‘Mine,’_  she thinks, and does not know if she means the flame or the throne or the palace or the world and all that lay in it.

As the flames reflect in Azula's bright gold eyes, she feels a whisper in her heart.

Iormungandr is stirring.

**Author's Note:**

> Other inspirations:
> 
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4957847/1/Ill-Take-the-Nightmares-Any-Day  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4704516/1/No-Good-Deed  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6042184/1/Only-That-Which-is-Written-in-Blood  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3628296/1/A_Touch_of_Destiny  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/3768658/1/Among_Many  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2443508/1/Ozymandias  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5259921/1/origin  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4069287/1/Scales  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5783612/1/Skysongs_Heart  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6738941/1/Constellation  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2829819/1/Arbitration  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6810283/1/Just_A_Girl  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/1895547/1/The_Cat_and_Her_Friend  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/4024922/1/Memento_Mori  
> https://www.fanfiction.net/s/6567824/1/After_The_End
> 
> How did all this percolate into what I wrote? In three years retrospect, I cannot for the life of me remember.


End file.
